For a while now, I have been getting a -36 error when trying to use Mac OS X 10.2.x's Connect to Server to connect to a Windows 2000 server SMB share. After a few weeks of frustration, I figured out what the problem was, or more accuratley, what I did wrong.

On Windows 2000, there are two services which at first glance do not seem to be related to file sharing, however, they are. Be sure to set Network DDE and Network DDE DSDM services to automatically start. If they are off, you will get the infamous -36 error commonly followed by a kernel dump.

I still think Apple has a bug for causing a UNIX core dump just because some expected services are not running on my W2K server.

I don't think you get a kernel panic just because SMB is failing. But there is a known bug (I reported it and was told that they knew about it already) related to canceling a "connect to server" using SMB. If you cancel and then try again right away, you get a kernel panic.

While doing the indicated changes on the Win2k machine probably helps (I haven't tested this myself), this is definetly a MacOS X bug. The reason I say this is because this sort of error only happens in MacOS X and not in Linux, which also uses Samba to connect to Windows networks.

I would love to see a Finder based network browser. Microsoft seems to have got things right with their current approach.

What fixed it for me was just adding the Win 2K machine (network) name to the mac's machine listing in NetInfo. When I just had the IP address I would get -36 errors every time. Once I added the alias (sdca_japan in my case) all is well!

Hmmm... This is definitely an interesting solution to this problem. I'm having difficulty understanding why these two services are related to connecting to an SMB share on that system.

DDE, or dynamic data exchange, is an old way for Windows programs to exchange information. From the MS site: "DDE is a form of interprocess communication that uses shared memory to exchange data between applications"

Now there is such a thing as DDE Shares, which is probably more related to this specific problem. Some more MS info:
"\\<ComputerName>\NDDE$
where <ComputerName> is the name of the computer running the server application. The NDDE$ indicates that the topic provided to DdeConnect is the DDE share name on the remote computer named <ComputerName>."

The only light I can shed is that it doesn't help. I tried enabling those services on a Win2K server and still got the -36 error while trying to connect. Frankly, I hadn't really dealy with this problem too much as I always anable afp (services for Macintosh) on any Win2K box that needs to serve Macs.

Maybe it was doing this before, but I see my PC by name now. Since I have only one PC in my network I can't tell whether the changes had anything to do with this. Could someone please let me know if the change does effect the name in the connect to server dialogue?

I was experiencing the same problem (-36 error) and after almost 2 weeks of frustration I simply reentered / edited the username & password (on win2kpro machine) which I was using to connect from my hybrid Yellow Dog Linux/Jaguar iBook and my problem went away... (re-authenticate had no effect)

Thank you thank you thank you. Thirteen months after getting OS X, Windows filesharing is finally working reliably. I guessed it was some issue with how the mac and pc interacted, since I could copy files from the mac to a mounted W2K share if they were smaller than 63K, but I would never have figured this out. I would have been waiting, and waiting for 10.x.x to fix it...Thanks again.

I also keep getting -36's. What is most frustrating is that it used to work, now it does not. I simply set up home networking on the Windows ME and then used "connect to" on the IBook and it worked. Now all -36's. What should I check?

I've had the same problem with the SMB error -36 but it's come on only
recently after having worked beautifully for months. I don't actually
believe it's a Mac OSX error; rather, I think it's a Windows sharing/
network configuration error.

I couldn't understand why my SMB connection stopped working and
managed to trace it back to a setting change that I made on my Win2K
server a while ago.

I cannot guarantee that this will work for everyone but it worked for me
:

1. Right-click on Network Neighbourhood and go to Properties
2. Click on Advancedand then Advanced Settings
3. Under the Adapters & Bindings tab, ensure that TCP/IP is bound to
both "Client for Microsoft Networks" and "File and Printer Sharing for
Microsoft Networks"

This one simple change worked and immediately my SMB sharing from
Mac to PC was working again.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Jeremy

PS eMail me at jeremyswampillai@yahoo.com and let me know if this
works for you - just so I know that what I did was a legit fix rather than
just a lucky guess... :)

I believe that this is a bug in the SMB service under OS X. It seems that
the DDE service is being used to resolve the name to the IP address. If
the service isn't running on the remote computer, all you get is an IP
address in the list, and you can't connect. I had disabled the DDE
service on my W2K machine to prevent broadcast chat messages from
coming over the computer. I have not had any problems connecting to
the computer with a Windows machine. Apple is using an outdated
method of connecting to Windows shares and should fix the problem
instead of users having to turn on something on a Windows machine that
is not nessessary. DDE is an outdated method of communcating with
Windows.

...your tip didn't work for me. I also have a -36 error problem just on
one machine on the network. None of the solutions described here in the
forum worked. Than I realised that when I stoped the FileMaker Server
service that is running on this machine the -36 errror disappeared. As
soon as I switched it back on again the error reappeared. Certainly it is
not a solution for me to switch of Filemaker Server. But till now I have
no idea for a workaround.

I get the -36 error when connecting to my WinXP machine. It's really weird because SMB worked last week and doesn't work this week. It works on some of my coworkers machines but not all. I did turn on the Network DDE services but that didn't fix it. It almost seems to me like it's a server issue. Perhaps our IT department did something to our DNS server.

I continue to have problems with this error. I can connect to some windows 2k servers on our network from this OS 10.2 Powerbook but cannot connect to others.

My real goal is to connect to network storage (which is running CIFS) but I cannot authenticate to this box either. I get the -36 error after it appears to hit the box and prompts me for username and password.

I'm having a nightmare with this -36 error. I can connect to servers fine, but then in the middle of large copiesI get the -36 error and it bombs out. I have tried turning on the DDE services but that didn't work for me. Has anyone else any other suggestions?

I'm having a nightmare with this -36 error. I can connect to servers fine, but then in the middle of large copiesI get the -36 error and it bombs out. I have tried turning on the DDE services but that didn't work for me. Has anyone else any other suggestions?

had sharing working fine between 10.2.8 and XP. logged on to XP from RDC, changed the share name of the dir that was shared, and now the machine doesn't show up in "connect to server" and if i type in smb://ip.address i get error -36.

I then did the add machine trick in netinfo and that fixed it. i decided to tinker some more (ie. fix what isn't broken) and change the share name again from RDC. this again killed my connection, but now my netinfo entry doesn't help and i can't get around the -36. I've recreated the netinfo entry and have rebooted both machines.... any ideas?

My Windows server access worked just fine yesterday, but today I found myself unable to use email and unable to access server files. After carefully reading this thread, I ended up with two likely suggestions. The first was to reenter name and password on the server. Second was a big uh huh! I bet my password expired. We installed a new server about a month and a half ago, and it's probably got tighter security than the old one which also ran older software. I got our administrator to log in and I reentered my password and the Windows world opened up for me once again.

I am having the same problem as everyone here, but I hope this will shed some light on the topic.

We have a mixed network where I work. Some computers are running NT 4 service pack 6 and others are running 2000 service pack 4 with Active Directory running. I can connect to all the NT boxes perfect. I can connect to some of the 2000 boxes. Those that will not accept a connection can still be connected to using smbclient through a terminal session

smbclient //server/path -U username -W workgroup

When I connect to the server this way it works perfect. I don't know the primary difference between OS X smb connect and the smbclient. I hope this helps figure it out.

It asked for the password and then returned to the prompt. I created the folder in my user directory. When I browsed to this folder in finder I was able to view the mount I couldn't make with Connect. I hope this helps figure out why it won't work the easy way.

Just been dealing with this problem myself. The solution here was that there's a service called 'Application Management' which needs to be running on the Windows server, if that's set that to start up automatically the problem stops. Seems that it's a bit of a black art though.

We've got several machines here at work running panther and jaguar. All machines use to be able to be able to acces the root level (so that you can see the shares) and mount the selected share. Then one one machine running panther started getting error -36. We can no longer connect to the root (to see she share) but must now type in the share name. The funny thing is that this only occurs on this one machine and I have not been able to figure out why.

Does anyone know if there is a hidden pref file somewhere that I can just delete. I can only guess that some SMB pref has been changed on this one machine.